


i have half a life to rewrite

by cabinfever



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Groundhog Day AU, M/M, Suicide, the moral of the story is that Bahamut sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 15:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14896931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cabinfever/pseuds/cabinfever
Summary: “Wait.” Noct raises a hand. “Where - when are we?”“When?” Ignis repeats softly. “Noct, we just settled down for a rest. It’s not been more than an hour or so.”“Zegnautus Keep dormitories,” Gladio adds. His brow furrows. “You okay, Noct?”It must have been a dream. It had to have been.But how do you dream ten years?Or, the Groundhog Day AU where Noctis learns the meaning of sacrifice.





	i have half a life to rewrite

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from “the future is now” by starset.

Noctis wakes on Angelgard. He wakes alone. He wakes confused.

He wakes  _ powerful. _

He stumbles out into the night, following the sound of Umbra’s barks. There is a note for him. There are people waiting for him in Hammerhead.

But the world is dark around him.

Galdin Quay is silent.

Even when the daemons screech challenges at him, every other sound is muted. This entire place reminds him of the depths of Steyliff Grove, and of the air of death and decay that had permeated every square foot of it. Something terrible happened here. 

Where did everybody go?

A hobgoblin dances up to him, chattering a challenge. Its wrists gleam with bracelets as it winds up to punch him.

Noctis steps back to get out of its way right before the blow connects, and the Ring on his finger flares up, sending bright white light in a wave all around him. It burns, holy and inescapable, and strikes the hobgoblin right in the face. The daemon screeches and flinches backwards, but it is no match for the might of an ascended king; it ignites in the divine flame of the Ring’s arcana, dissolving into nothingness.

Umbra barks, and the world shudders around them. The other hobgoblins on the end of the boardwalk scream and burst into black miasma, banished by the feral magic of one of the Host of Twenty Four.

“Thank you,” Noctis rasps, and he reaches down to pat Umbra on the head. Umbra looks up at him, lolling out his tongue happily, and licks his hand.

They move on down the rotting boards down to the heart of the Quay. 

Something catches his eye, shoved off to the side by the stairs up to the Mother of Pearl. Noctis pauses beside it. The world has been waiting for him for however long; it can wait for him to look at this. This bench...this shirt. The clothes stir up a faint memory, but he can’t quite place them. Noctis crouches, reaching for the shirt, and he studies the time-worn color of it. Someone he knew. Someone familiar. 

Ten years is a long time, though, full of reflection or not. He can’t quite remember anymore.

He moves on.

It takes too long for him to fight his way through the Quay. Without the other three, he’s off balance, relying too much on arcana from the Ring instead of brute force. An iron giant comes running up to him and swings and Noct expects, like an  _ idiot,  _ that Gladio will be the one to come running over to him and block the blow with his shield but Gladio isn’t  _ there- _

Noct hits the ground fifteen feet from where he’s been standing, trying desperately to regain his breath and not scream and attract more of the daemons. He places a shaking hand on the growing warmth in his shirt where the blunt edge of the blade has torn through him. 

He needs to get out of here.

He staggers to his feet, searching along the horizon for anything that might bring some shred of safety. The Quay is a husk of itself and surely nothing waits for him beyond. He can’t make it to Hammerhead on foot without some rest. 

Wait.

Blue smoke, lit up on the horizon.

Relief flows through him. So the havens are still intact. He runs towards it, casting death on any goblins that dare skitter close to him as he darts through the sand. This sprinting reminds him of a time long, long before this, when Gladio had woken him early in the morning and challenged him to a race in the golden sands. He tries to imagine his Shield beside him and pushes himself harder, casting holy light in his wake to fend off any attacks from behind. The daemons stop chasing him after a time, fended off by the divine magic of the haven’s runes. 

Noctis clambers to the flat stone stop of it, falling to his hands and knees to catch his breath. He made it. He made it.

So he’s here on a haven now, safe for the time being.

What was its name again?

_ Lachyrte Haven.  _ Yes, that’s right.

Luna had taught him the names of all the Lucian havens once, back when he was still in Tenebrae and the worst thing that had happened was the Marilith attack. And then Tenebrae had fallen, and then Insomnia, and then Altissia and Luna and Ignis and now-

Well.

The world is dying.

He casts a hasty fira at the logs that smolder there at the center of the haven, wincing when the fire flares up far brighter than he’d expected. The magic must be coming more easily now. He’d never been able to cast the magic without flasks, held back as he was by his injury from the Marilith attack. It doesn’t drain him anymore, hardly dimming the light at the center of his chest.

There’s no food for him to eat except a little can of  _ whatever  _ that he’s kept tucked away in his corner of the armory. He plucks it out and studies it, grimacing at the knowledge of the contents. They’d eaten so much of this after Altissia. After everything changed. Back when he’d still had his friends by his side, he’d resented the taste. It was always too bitter; too hard to swallow. He’s grateful for it now. It reminds him of the reality of his return, at least, though the world is dark around him.

It’ll all be over soon. He can fix this.

He  _ will  _ fix this.

He heats the can as well as he can, shoveling food into his mouth for the first time in a decade. It’s disgusting, but he can’t help but savor it. Maybe when he gets back and meets with the others, they’ll have a real meal. Maybe Ignis will have his sight back. Whenever this is, he knows they’re waiting for him. It can’t have been too long. They can fix this. They can fix this.

But first, he needs to sleep. He’s still unbearably exhausted even after however long he spent in the depths of the Crystal. 

Umbra curls up beside him, tucking his head up against Noct’s chest. Noctis wraps an arm around him to hold him close, and he tries to ignore how uncomfortable the stone is and how he can feel hundreds of dead eyes watching him. Daemons.

_ People. _

How many of them had he known?

That’s the thought that stays with him as he drifts off to sleep. That, and the hope that he will be back with his friends soon.

Hammerhead isn’t far. He’ll make it by foot in a few days if he hurries.

There’s still hope.

He closes his eyes, and he falls asleep.

 

\---

 

He wakes up with a gasp.

There’s light this time, and no hard stone beneath his back. Instead, there’s a mattress below him and the impassive iron bars of a bunk above him, and everything is suffused in the ugly light of fluorescence and sterility. A bunk. He’s sitting in a bunk.

Prompto looks over from the bunk beside him, eyes shadowed and face marred by the lingering effects of torture. “Bad dream?” he asks.

Noct opens his mouth, trying desperately to come up with a word that isn’t a scream. He comes up only with silence. How long has it been since he’s heard another human voice? How long since he’s talked to anyone other than himself? 

Instead, he just nods and says, “Bad dream.” He sounds younger now than he did back at the haven. Or in the dream. Or-

Prompto nods. “We should get going.”

Noct looks down at his hands, dumbfounded. They’re smaller now, not like they’d been when he’d seen himself in the dark. Not older. He clears his throat again, listening to the sound of his own voice. He sounds...younger again. Like himself. Like he’d been.

Ignis turns his head towards Noctis from an adjacent bunk, eyes closed behind his glasses. “Ready to head onwards, Noct?” he asks quietly. 

It must have been a dream. It had to have been.

But how do you dream ten years?

How do you dream a place you’ve never seen?

“Noct?” Ignis asks, jerking him out of his thoughts. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Noct nods, but then he remembers that Ignis is blind, so he rasps, “Uh. Yeah. Just collecting myself.”

“Collect faster,” Gladio says from the doorway. He leans outside, checking something only he can see. He shakes his head. “We’ve got incoming.”

Prompto sighs and rises to his feet, pulling his gun from the armiger. “Headshots,” he says, “and try to get those magitek cores on their chests. That’s what powers them.” He twirls the pistol anxiously. It’s interesting: Noct had never noticed that Prompto has a new gun now. When did he even get that if he’s been in chains since falling from the train?

No. That’s not important right now.

What the hell is going on?

“Wait.” Noct raises a hand. “Where - when are we?”

“When?” Ignis repeats softly. “Noct, we just settled down for a rest. It’s not been more than an hour or so.”

“Zegnautus Keep dormitories,” Gladio adds. His brow furrows. “You okay, Noct?”

Noct clears his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Just got a little disoriented, I guess.” He stands and adjusts his gauntlet carefully, staring down at the Ring glinting on his finger. “Let’s just go.”

He cautiously follows them towards the hangar.

It’s all the same.

Ravus fights them, controlled by death and darkness.

Noctis leaves the others behind.

Ardyn taunts him.

_ Do you remember their last words? _

He’s lived them twice now. He knows them too well.

The Crystal waits.

He reaches out to it. “Please,” he begs, remembering what he must have said before. It just feels so familiar. “Help me stop the daemons.”

It doesn’t.

Noctis cries out in anger when the Crystal catches his hand and begins to drag him into its depths. What’s the point if it’s all the same?

Nothing changed.

The Bladekeeper hovers before him in the heart of their star. He reaches out his hand, and Noctis comes to rest in his palm.

“Chosen King,” Bahamut greets him.

Noct stares. “I was just here.”

“You have been called back.”

“Why are you doing this?” he demands, but Bahamut is impassive.

“The Chosen King must learn and grow, lest he lose his way.” He turns his hand, letting Noctis plummet into the shifting light below. “Now rest, and reflect upon past wrongs.”

Past wrongs, future wrongs - what does it matter?

Noctis yells out a wordless challenge to Bahamut, but the Draconian disappears in a hail of phantom swords.

Ten years.

He wakes again in a world of ruin.

So it wasn’t a dream.

This time, he’s so angry that he gets reckless. The daemonwall beyond the Quay slashes out and grabs him, dragging him closer and closer to its gaping maw. Noct thrashes in its grasp, conjuring weapon after weapon to fend it off, but the daemon holds his arms tightly, restricting the use of the armiger and the Ring. Noctis screams as the daemon begins to tear into his flesh in earnest.

Dying is more painful than he’d ever imagined.

He can’t get his hands free to pull out a phoenix down, and there is nobody around to save him. Umbra barks desperately, but the daemonwall is everywhere and nowhere at once. There’s no hope. There’s just the pain.

Noctis screams.

And for a moment, everything goes blissfully, impossibly black.

Then-

He wakes in Zegnautus Keep.

Prompto blinks at him. “Bad dream?” he asks.

Noct nods curtly and turns away.

It wasn’t a dream.

“So we’re doing this,” he growls, and he gets ready for the day.

 

\---

 

“You sound different,” Gladio tells him during one of the mornings. It might be morning; Noct’s not sure how time works in the middle of a decaying fortress stuck in nighttime. But he counts his time by the decade-long day, and waking up in Zegnautus has always been the first thing he remembers.

So it’s the morning.

It’s been forty years since he’s bothered trying to change something. He got discouraged after a few attempts that only ended in him being absorbed by the Crystal and waking up in a ruined Lucis, alone and cold and too powerful for his own good. He just keeps dying or dropping from exhaustion.

He’d never expected to learn about all of the interesting ways someone can die firsthand.

“Different how?” Noct asks, lacing up his boots resolutely. He’s going to try to find a way around the hangar today. If he manages to do that, then maybe they can avoid Ravus and they can all make it to the Crystal today. He needs to track down a map first, though. It might take a few loops to manage it. He has time. It’ll work out.

“Like you’ve got your head on straight.”

Noct shrugs. “Guess I had time to think about it while I was alone.”

“Isolation does that, huh?”

“Something like that.”

 

\---

 

“Go to the elevator!” Gladio roars, swinging his sword into the gut of an approaching goblin. “We’ll be fine!”

They will be. Noctis knows they will be. He knows because he’s lived this; he’s watched it over and over again for years. A hundred and twenty. He remembers every minute. He wishes he didn’t.

 

\---

 

On the fourteenth day, he holds Ignis back before they leave the dormitory.

“Ignis,” he ventures. “Do you really think we should have turned back?” 

Ignis is silent for a moment; Noct can practically hear him thinking. There’s a tension in Ignis’s shoulders that Noct wishes he had noticed earlier. Maybe that’s the secret to ending this loop: help Ignis find peace.

“Ignis, if you don’t want to answer-”

“No,” Ignis interrupts, holding up a hand. “No, I will. I was just collecting my thoughts.” He rubs at the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses aside. The movement reveals more of the extensive scarring along his eyes and cheeks, reminding Noct of all that he’s sacrificed in the name of service to a useless king. “I do think so,” he murmurs. “Yes, we should have turned back.”

Noct nods. He’d figured as much. “Yeah, I understand.”

“What’s brought this on?” Ignis asks.

Noct shrugs, though he knows Ignis won’t see it. “Guess I’m scared,” he mumbles.

Ignis’s right eye opens behind his darkened glasses, shining silver in the fluorescent lights. “Oh, Noct,” he murmurs, and there’s such tenderness in his voice that Noct fears he might crumble. 

It doesn’t help. The Crystal takes him anyway.

He ends his crystalline slumber thinking of all the times Ignis has smiled at him.

When he wakes on Angelgard, he smiles sadly at Umbra before throwing himself into the sea. 

On the fifteenth day, he corners Ignis in the cold, impassive dormitory and kisses him.

It’s been days - Weeks? Centuries? He’s not quite sure - since he last kissed Ignis. After the tragedy of Altissia, they’d each been dancing around each other, trying not to aggravate the other’s trauma from the wrath of the Tidemother and whatever it was that happened to Ignis. And every day had taken them further apart, and then the world had started falling to pieces around them, and it’d never been the right time.

No time like the present, though.

It seems like Ignis has missed this too. He raises shaking hands to Noct’s cheeks, framing his face in a sure grip, and deepens the kiss. It’s exactly as Noctis remembers, and still just as intoxicating. Noctis groans, touch-starved after over a century without affection, and welcomes any part of Ignis he can touch.

They need to come up for air eventually, and Noctis breaks away regretfully, getting as close to Ignis as he can while he catches his breath. “I miss you,” he whispers, pressing his head against Ignis’s chest. “Gods, I miss you.”

Ignis wraps his arms tentatively around Noctis’s shoulders. His touch is lighter than it had once been, tempered by time and pain. 

“I love you,” Noct says, and he hopes that that’ll be the key. If hatred can’t kill Ardyn and stop the Crystal from taking him, then maybe this can. 

Ignis holds him tighter now; Noct hopes he never stops. “I love you too, Noctis,” he swears.

It doesn’t help. It never helps. 

 

\---

 

On the twentieth day, he asks them if they can turn back.

“Now?” Gladio growls. “After everything?”

“Not out of here,” Noctis insists. “Just a little further back. There’s something I want to try.”

He takes them back to the central chamber of the Keep.

Now that the mechanism in the emperor’s throne room has been destroyed, Noctis flexes his fingers around the empty air and lets his engine blade appear in his hand. The magic is more noticeable now than it is in the time after the Crystal; it makes him miss the raw unbridled power of the kings. It’ll do for now, though.

He stands at the edge of the center column and stares down over the ruined expanse of it. The lights flicker down, down, down into infinity.

“Where are we?” Ignis asks quietly. “I can hear the echo.”

“Central chamber of the Keep,” Noct says. “I won’t be long.”

“Noct,” Ignis says, and his voice has an edge to it that Noctis hasn’t heard for a few decades. Worried. Desperate. “We can take the elevator. We’ll stay together.”

Noct shakes his head. “They’ll hear us coming.” Ardyn knows their movements by the cameras and the operating machinery; whenever Noct has attempted to use something, the doors all around it open and spill out waves of decaying, berserk magitek troopers. 

So he jumps.

He lands down, down, down, phasing through the impact and rolling to avoid crumpling into a mess of bone down at the bottom of the great steel tower that connects the dead fortress to the rest of Gralea. He rolls over to his back, coughing and desperately trying to get air back in his lungs. 

He stands up shakily and looks around. He’s on the right level, thankfully.

Ah. So Ardyn hasn’t gotten here yet. Good. 

He’ll remember that.

He pulls a phoenix down from his jacket pocket and crushes it over the chest of Ravus Nox Fleuret.

 

\---

 

It takes a few attempts to even get Ravus up to the Crystal room. Some days, he becomes corrupted if they lose sight of him. Some days, Ravus rages at Noctis until Noct is forced to put him down with a quick use of the alterna spell. Some days, Ravus refuses to face Ardyn once more.

But they make it eventually.

Ardyn is waiting.

Ravus bares his teeth and draws his saber, running straight at him.

“Ravus, no!” Noctis yells after him. He can’t lose another Fleuret. Not again. What if Ravus is the key to make it  _ stop- _

Ravus stops dead in his tracks, just feet away from Ardyn. He makes a strangled, choking noise and staggers forward, nearly falling to his knees before he regains his balance. He turns sickeningly slowly, stumbling in a clumsy parody of a military about-face. He chokes again, and Noctis sees a shining red parody of the Sword of the Father sticking out of Ravus’s chest.

Even as the four of them watch, the sword dissolves into crimson starlight, leaving only a gaping wound dripping black ichor. Ravus sobs and falls to his knees, gasping for breath, and then falls prone on the catwalk, motionless.

Ardyn makes a quiet noise of consideration. “A curious strategy, Noct.”

Noctis steps over Ravus’s corpse and brushes past Ardyn. “Doesn’t hurt to try,” he mutters.

Maybe it worked.

He reaches out to the Crystal and prays it won’t take him.

It does.

He doesn’t even react to the pain of it consuming him anymore. If anything, he forces himself in, hastening his painful journey from life to the curious world in between. His vision flares white, burning his physical body away and replacing it with light and steel. 

Back in the Crystal. Back in the heart of their star.

Bahamut glares down at him. “You dare much, young king.”

“Young,” Noctis scoffs. “I’ve lived enough to not be young. I’ve lived enough to be dead by now.”

“And yet,” Bahamut rumbles, “your body remains the same.”

“Thanks to you.”

“You have not learned yet. You are not ready.”

“You told me to learn.” Noctis glares up at Bahamut. “I’m learning from my mistakes. Either I do what I want or I’ll just let things take their course. One of us will get bored eventually.”

Bahamut’s eyes flash from the dark depths of his mask. The eyes of the lord of the astrals are shockingly blue. “You underestimate the might of the gods.”

“And you’re forgetting your own prophecy.” Noct raises his chin. “Power greater than that of the Six, right? The more you do this, the more I learn how to use it. Are you ready for me to try to learn how to tear this loop apart from the inside?”

Bahamut speaks once more, and his voice is cold. “Enter reflection, Chosen King.”

Noct goes into the endless blueness of the Crystal and talks to Bahamut no longer. He hopes that his threat will change something about this endless cycle of darkness and light and waiting.

At least it was convincing.

 

\---

 

He gives up on Ravus after fifty years.

 

\---

 

He gets careless sometimes.

On a few of his iterations, he lets the others die.

He’s tried everything. Maybe he needs to try it on his own.

But at first, he doesn’t mean it. 

He doesn’t mean to let Ignis die alone.

But that’s how he finds him, crumpled and bleeding after they lost track of him. He’d been behind them, following along quietly, and somewhere along the way they’d all realized that they’d stopped hearing the constant click and slide of his cane against the ground. How could they have lost track of him; how could they have forgotten  _ Ignis- _

He stares down at Ignis’s body, not blinking. If he doesn’t blink, then his vision will eventually blur out with tears, and maybe he won’t see the way that Ignis has been cut down like prey, left to be found like a gift.

Noctis falls to his knees beside Ignis and carefully adjusts his glasses for him. Ignis deserves to be composed, even like this. He deserves the dignity of a warrior’s death.

For a moment, he’s tempted to lean in close and press a final kiss to his lips. If this is the loop that works, this could be the last time he truly sees Ignis’s face. So he leans in close, brushes Ignis’s hair from his forehead, and kisses him one last time. He tries to ignore how cold he already is, and how his lips come away wet with blood.

He clenches his fists and makes for the center of the Keep.

Ardyn stands before the Crystal, twirling a bloodred scythe between his fingers. Dark crimson liquid drips off the crescent tip of it, painting a pattern of droplets along the metal scaffolding holding this platform up in the Crystal’s suspended chamber. He looks up when Noctis draws near, smiling sweetly. He shakes the scythe once more, scattering blood in a line towards Noct’s feet.

Ignis’s blood.

“Did you see my gift?” he asks, smiling.

“Shut up,” Noctis growls. He doesn’t even bother drawing his blade. He just keeps walking forward.

“Poor Ignis-”

“Don’t say his fucking name.”

_ “Ignis-” _

Noctis yells out his fury, wordless and formless and broken. He draws Ignis’s spelldaggers and slashes them across Ardyn’s neck in a cross.

Ardyn laughs, spraying blood dark enough to turn black. He falls to his knees, clutching at the gash where his skin had once been. But he never stops laughing, never stops smiling; never stops gloating.

“Satisfied?” he gurgles. “Is this your victory, Noct?”

Noct doesn’t bother to respond. He calls up every memory of Ignis and sets the daggers afire, bringing them down in a burning arc into Ardyn’s heart.

Sulfurous golden eyes fly wide with shock and twisted glee. The scent of burning fabric and flesh fills the air with an acrid sweetness. Ardyn’s corpse falls to the ground, bleeding red and purple and black miasma into the air. The image of it shivers, shudders, and crumbles to dust and tar as well, consigning the Immortal Accursed to the void for now.

Noct shakes his head to clear it of the lingering echo of Ardyn’s ruined laughter.

He walks to the Crystal and screams for a decade.

 

\---

 

The day he lets them all die, he does not cry.

He cannot cry. If he cries, it’s all over. If he cries, then it’s just not worth it anymore.

The Crystal accepts him hungrily, catapulting him into the timeless eternity of the world within the world. Noctis ignores the rumbling words of Bahamut and sits in silence for a decade, ruminating on years of endless hate.

Hate for Ardyn. Hate for himself. Hate for the gods.

It’s enough to power him beyond his imagining; it’s enough to bring him the full might of gods and kings alike.

When he wakes on Angelgard, he walks through Galdin Quay with the Ring aflame, setting any daemons afire if they dare come near him. Anything that tries to destroy him from afar is immediately targeted by the full strength of the death spell, pulling whatever twisted life it possesses into himself, sustaining himself with the force of others’ pain.

He has no patience for these corrupted shells that had once been his countrymen.

There’s nobody left in this world for him.

He steals Talcott’s truck and drives it to Insomnia. Sleepless for however long it takes, he forces himself across the ragged remains of Lucis and into the darkness of his old home. When the truck breaks down, he takes out his sword and starts warping, yelling at the empty, broken city. He pushes himself past the point of stasis; what does it matter if he falls from some crumbling skyscraper?

It won’t matter. It never matters.

He’ll either wake up again, or he’ll finally die.

Neither is exactly a relief.

He barely makes it to the Citadel, avoiding most of the monsters through sheer force of will and avoidance. There’s no stealth in his approach; no elegance.

Ardyn appears, as Noct knew he would, even though he has not yet lived as far as this future.

It’s hardly a battle this time.

Maybe Noct lets him win. It certainly feels like it when all he feels is relief when Ardyn stabs him through the chest and forces him to his knees.

“A pity,” Ardyn sneers, taking Noctis’s chin and turning his head back and forth, studying him with glowing golden eyes. “I thought you would have been worthy. But you couldn’t even manage to save your friends.”

Noctis sobs and says nothing. Maybe this is the atonement he needs. Maybe a death at the hand of the Accursed will set this whole world ablaze and he’ll wake up anywhere but Zegnautus. Maybe he won’t wake up again. 

Ardyn makes a quiet sound. “Gods, but you’re disappointing,” he mutters, and he disappears.

Noctis kneels alone in the center of his ruined throne room, choking around the sword through his chest. He tries to draw in new breath, but it does nothing but extend the agony. When the sword dissolves into red shards of crystal and leaves him empty and grieving in the middle of his dying city, he welcomes the dark wave of sleep.

It crashes.

He wakes.

“Bad dream?” Prompto asks.

Noctis shrugs. “Nothing too bad.”

 

\---

 

On the one hundred and thirteenth loop, Noctis takes them all the way to the hill. 

It’s been a while since he’s attempted this journey. Without sleep, it’s difficult. Going from Angelgard to Hammerhead to the edge of Lucis is miserable, but at least this time he has company other than just Umbra.

“You need to sleep,” Ignis tells him softly. 

Noctis shakes his head, staring up at the ceiling of the tent. “I can’t,” he rasps.

“You must.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t, Ignis.”

Ignis reaches out and takes his hand, rubbing a soothing thumb over the back of Noct’s hand. He pulls their intertwined fingers together and presses a kiss to the skin of Noct’s knuckles. “Tell me why,” he suggests.

And Noct tells him the truth. “I can’t stop reliving this,” he whispers. “I’ve lived through ten years in the Crystal over a hundred times. And every time I wake up back in the Keep and do it all over again. I know you won’t believe me,” he adds before Ignis can speak up, “but I can’t keep acting like I’m fine.”

“I believe you,” Ignis says, to his surprise.

“Why?”

“Why else would you tell me?” Ignis kisses Noct’s fingers again; his lips brush against the Ring. “I know better than to ignore you, Noct.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he admits.

Ignis sighs. “How can I help?”

“Just kiss me,” Noct says, swallowing his pride to get the words out. 

Ignis does.

He does, he does, he does.

He holds Noctis too, even though he didn’t ask for that. But he’d known. Ignis has always known what Noctis needs.

“Stay until I fall asleep,” he begs Ignis. “Don’t let me forget you.”

Ignis smiles, and even that is radiant in the darkness around them. “I’m always right here,” he promises.

Noctis nods and presses his face into Ignis’s neck; he prays that Ignis won’t mention his tears. 

He wishes this will be the one that works, and that he’ll wake up like this as well, and that maybe this time they’ll all go to Insomnia together. And maybe they’d win and bring back the dawn. It’s enough of a pipe dream to hope so much, but maybe he’d live to see the dawn at Ignis’s side. He’s given enough, hasn’t he? Doesn’t he deserve some sort of calm after so long spent waiting and trying and failing?

Or maybe he’ll die to save the world. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

At least then he wouldn’t have to live this pain all over again.

He falls asleep in the tent with Ignis’s arms around him and the taste of him on his lips.

He wakes up cold and alone, curled up around a body that isn’t there on an unforgiving bunk.

But this time, it changes.

On the one hundred and fourteenth day, Ignis steals the Ring.

Noctis doesn’t expect it because he shouldn’t need to expect it. It’s never happened before. It was never part of the plan.

But he wakes up from his restless slumber in Zegnautus Keep not on his own, but with Prompto shaking him awake, eyes wide. 

“It’s Ignis!” he cries. “Ignis is gone!”

“Gone?” Noct repeats, launching himself out of the bed. His heart stutters into a sprint, pounding out a desperate rhythm in his chest. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s  _ gone,  _ Noct,” Prompto replies. “Like he left without telling anyone. Gladio’s sweeping the halls in the area. He might’ve just gotten lost.”

Something in Noct’s stomach sinks. “No,” he says, and he raises his hand to conjure the power of kings, but he finds his hand bare. “Fuck,” he hisses. This can’t be a coincidence. Not after he’d told Ignis the truth. Not after he’d begged. Somehow,  _ somehow,  _ Ignis had remembered.

He darts out of the dormitory without another word, ignoring Prompto’s desperate pleas 

He sprints through halls he now knows by heart, warping up through passages that the others would never be able to find. He has spent years figuring out the intricacies of Zegnautus Keep, and all he knows is that he needs to get to Ignis  _ right now.  _

He emerges where the Crystal should be, but he finds the chamber full of ashes and rubble. The sphere that holds the Crystal sits crumpled on the floor of the chamber, creaking with the stress of its collapse. Broken rebar and shattered stone litters the floor around it, turning the Keep into a wasteland. Something happened here. Something terrible.

And lying on the rubble, broken and alone-

“Ignis!” he cries, and he warps to his side.

Ignis sucks in a wheezing, painful breath when Noctis crackles into existence at his side. “Noct?” he whispers. His glasses are gone; his blind eyes fix on Noctis with remarkable accuracy, blown wide and silver-green. 

“What did you do?” he asks, horrified.

Ignis smiles, baring bloodied teeth. “I tried,” he rasps. “Noct, I promise I tried.”

“You didn’t need to!” Noct cries. “I was going to fix it!”

“Take this,” Ignis insists, and he holds his hand out to Noctis; the Ring sits on it, surrounded by the ashes that remain of Ignis’s skin. “Thought it would work...a second time-” He stops, coughing desperately, and then weakly adds, “I was wrong.”

“No, c’mon, Specs, you’re going to be okay,” Noctis tells him, as if insisting will make it the truth. “Ignis, don’t die on me, come  _ on-” _

Ignis coughs again, whispers Noct’s name, and falls still.

Noctis curls up over Ignis’s body, holding him in his lap as if that will bring him some comfort. It’s just his body. It’s not Ignis. He’s seen him dead enough times that he should be used to it.

But this is  _ different. _

Ignis changed it this time.

Noct takes the Ring from Ignis’s hand as tenderly as he can, pressing a kiss to his burn-scarred fingers. He lays Ignis down on the rubble as carefully as he can and stumbles to the Crystal, trying not to trip and forcing himself to see through the haze of tears.

He holds his hand out to the Crystal and prays that this won’t be the loop where it finally lets him obtain its power.

He’s never been so relieved to have it consume him.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen!” Noct screams into the face of Bahamut when he’s entered the Crystal. “That was never part of the plan!”

“We do not control all,” Bahamut tells him. “Some have the will to recall that which they have learned.”

Noct takes a step back. “Don’t make me go back there,” he whispers, and he wipes tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. “Don’t make me see him like that again.”

“The king must sacrifice all for his world.”

“I’ve given my life for them. I’ve given a hundred lifetimes for them.”

Bahamut stares at him. “Give more.”

Noctis conjures the armiger in a flash, yelling out a wordless, anguished challenge.

He’s held back by a barrier of floating swords that burst into existence around him, keeping him from getting any closer to the king of the gods. “I hate you,” he snarls. 

“You have said this before.”

“I’m done trying to fix your world!”

“A gift, then,” Bahamut rumbles, “to earn your favor once more.” He gestures with a single massive finger, and Noctis follows his gaze to the deep infinity of the Crystal.

Ignis walks towards him through the endless blueness, eyes shining bright green. “Noct,” he says warmly, and he reaches his arms out.

“Ignis,” Noct breathes, and he steps forward. Of course. With Ignis dead, his soul has rejoined whatever blueness powers the soul of their star. He’s here. He’s  _ here. _

“This gift comes with a caveat.”

Noct glares up at the king of the gods. “What?”

Bahamut gestures, and Ignis stumbles falls to his knees before he can reach Noctis, screaming and clutching at his face. “Noct!” he cries, doubled over at Noct’s feet. He chokes, sending blood out in a spray into the great unending blueness. The blood sizzles and smolders even as it goes.

Noctis drops to his knees before Ignis, reaching out frantically to hold his shoulders. “Ignis,” he begs. “C’mon, not again.” He looks up wildly at Bahamut. “Not here,” he snarls. “Don’t let him be hurt here.”

“Give me a reason.”

“He’s done enough!” Noct yells. 

“Then end his pain.”

Ignis looks up at Noct with eyes that bleed violet fire. “Noct,” he begs, and his voice cracks around a scream.

Noctis hesitates.

If this is all just going to reset anyway, then this isn’t really Ignis. It won’t be Ignis once Noctis wakes up in Zegnautus again. Maybe this won’t mean a thing, and only Noct will remember it, and it won’t affect a thing.

But if he fixes it and this is the last loop, then he’ll have let Ignis suffer.

He can’t do that.

“Fine,” he says, voice shaking. Then, louder, “Fine! I’ll do what you want.”

He blinks, and Bahamut is gone, and Ignis stands before him, smiling.

“Noctis,” he says again, and he leans in to kiss Noct.

The kiss tastes like fire and blood and betrayal, but Noctis ignores it. This is Ignis. For now, for this one time, he has Ignis with him in the Crystal.

Those ten years are the best he has.

 

\---

 

He still wakes up alone, though.

“Do you remember me saying anything to you?” Noctis asks carefully in Zegnautus after he wakes from throwing himself into the Scourge-poisoned sea.

Ignis tilts his head to the side. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Noct opens his mouth to reply, but he stops himself. 

It’s not worth it.

 

\---

 

Somewhere along the way, Noct starts losing hope.

He doesn’t quite remember what hope feels like anymore, anyway.

 

\---

 

He forgets a lot of things, really.

“King’s Knight?” he offers quietly to Prompto one day.

Prompto blinks at him for a second, probably processing what Noct has just said. He repeats, “King’s Knight? Really?”

Noct shrugs. “Old time’s sake, and all.”

Something like a smile spreads across Prompto’s bruised face, and he nods. “Yeah. Okay, then. Let’s do it.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and opens the app.

Noctis follows suit, loading up the game. He taps at some options a few times. He stares down at the screen. Faintly, he says, “I don’t…”

Prompto glances over at him. “Hm?”

Noctis blinks. “I don’t know how to do this,” he says at the same moment as he realizes the truth of it.

He doesn’t remember this game anymore.

 

\---

 

The Rogue materializes out of the endless shifting blueness of the Crystal during his one hundred and seventieth sleep. She stares down at him with eyes both empty and full, burning with a flame that already surrounds them both. Her gaze keeps disappearing beneath the endless shadows of her headdress, but Noct feels its phantom heat nonetheless.

“You seek to restore the light,” she says. It’s not a question.

Noct nods. “Yeah.”

She scoffs, or does the functional equivalent from hundreds of years ago. Her expression does not change, impassive and beautiful in a mask of cracking porcelain. “Such informality. You are young, Chosen King.”

“I just want it to end,” Noct says. He’s so, so tired.

“I am curious,” she says, idly spinning her shuriken in her hands, “to see how this goes. Go with my blessing, King Noctis. Know the power of waiting in the shadows.” She leans in close, and her eyes gleam with sapphire flames for a heartbeat before they fall into shadows behind her mask again. “Be ready to strike,” she whispers.

Noctis wakes on Angelgard and conjures the Star of his ancestress. 

“Be ready to strike,” he repeats, and he lays down so that he might start the cycle anew.

 

\---

 

For years, he gathers the blessings of the Lucii. Every time, the Ring flares brighter.

Learning.

 

\---

 

His father joins him on the one hundred and ninety ninth day. 

Noctis should be accustomed by now to the austere silver armor of the kings and queens. His ancestors have all adopted the likeness of Bahamut in their immortal forms, hiding their faces behind dragons’ scales. Such was the price of the divine power they were granted.

Somehow, he recognizes his father immediately, though he does not see his face.

Regis watches him.

“Have you seen what I’ve been doing?” Noct asks. “What he did?” Somewhere along the way, the  _ he  _ who he hated has changed; he hopes his father will understand the difference.

A nod. So he gets it.

“Can I at least see your face?” Noct asks quietly. 

Regis shakes his head silently. He reaches out and holds Noctis by the chin with a cold, armored hand. One thumb reaches up and swipes away a tear Noct doesn’t remember shedding. 

“I miss you,” Noct whispers, and his breath hitches around a sob.

Regis holds him close, wrapping him up in the warm endless folds of his cape, and through the overwhelming aura of steel, Noct recognizes the faint scent of his father’s favorite cologne. He presses himself closer, desperate for anything that will bring him back to a city he can barely remember with a father he’s not known for centuries.

“I’m so proud of you,” Regis tells him softly, and Noctis wakes on Angelgard.

 

\---

 

On the two hundredth day that he walks into the Crystal, he finds the Mystic.

It’s hard to miss him when he appears in a burst of blue starlight, looming above Noctis in the draconian armor of the Lucii. Gods, even their immortal forms bear the influence of the god they were all born to serve.

“Long have I waited,” the Mystic says. His voice echoes in his helmet, sounding more and more like Bahamut with every reverberation. “I am the Founder King - did you know that?”

Noct nods, though he’s not sure if he really does know. He surely learned it, long ago in school or in his lessons or in a conversation with his father. But all of those stories and books are centuries away. 

“Ardyn was my brother,” the Mystic says quietly. “He was my brother. I have mourned for years upon years, Noctis. Two thousand, and then you arrived. And here I am now, two thousand years after that.”

“So you know that the world keeps restarting.”

“You forget, Noctis, that our souls are fused. You bear my weapon. You have the power of kings, and you  _ will  _ destroy my brother.”

“You are the last king I need,” Noct tells him. “The first and the last.  _ Please.” _

For a long, long time, the Mystic does not move. It might be minute and it might be years; Noctis has never quite gotten the hang of telling time in a place where life hangs in eternal balance. But the Founder King moves at last, slowly raising his hands to his face.

And then he does something none of the other Lucii have done.

He removes his helmet.

His eyes are the same warm gold as Ardyn’s, but they hold none of the same poison as the Accursed’s do. He blinks down at Noctis and reaches out to hold him by the shoulders. “I am Somnus Lucis Caelum,” he says solemnly. “Noctis, you are my heir.”

Noctis nods. “Chosen,” he says, because that is all they call him in this crystalline prison. He figures it will be the most familiar term to use.

Somnus presses their foreheads together, breathing out a prayer in the language of old Solheim and of a Lucis long gone, and Noctis understands the final piece of the story.

He knows who Ardyn was.

“You know what you must do,” Somnus says, and Noctis wakes.

He comes back to consciousness with a gasp, staggering to his feet in the middle of the stone prison of Angelgard.

He doesn’t bother going through the motions this time. He steels himself, falls to his knees in the middle of the ray of sickly moonlight, and conjures his father’s blade. It shines in his hands, crystalline and wicked, promising retribution. Noct knows it well. He turns it in his hands, twirling it to check the balance. After two thousand years of waiting, the steel has not lost its edge.

It’ll serve its purpose well enough.

Noctis holds his arms out and turns the hilt so that the blade faces him.

“Trust in me,” he breathes, and he plunges the blade into his chest.

 

\---

 

Noctis is old.

Noctis is twenty years old.

He has lived through two hundred days of darkness. He has woken in Zegnautus Keep two hundred times, always exhausted even after years of rest. He has walked through time and the world between the worlds for two thousand years.

He knows now.

The light waxes full.

“Bad dream?” Prompto asks.

Noctis stands and flexes his hand, staring down at the Ring of the Lucii there. It’s gleaming bright already, suffused with the power of kings he should not have received yet.

And yet here it is.

“Not at all,” he replies, and he sets off down the hall.

And he waits for Ardyn.

He stands before the Crystal with his hands behind his back. Military posture, just like Gladio taught him.

At his back, the Crystal whispers desperate, longing promises into his ears and heart and soul, begging him to claim its power. Sometimes it sounds like his father. Sometimes it sounds like Bahamut, and like the threat of divine fury.

They are empty promises. He does not need what the Crystal offers. He has spent years understanding the path to Providence. He has gained the full power of the kings two hundred times.

He looks at Ardyn, and he does not hate him.

“Why do you not rage at me?” Ardyn asks, stepping closer. “Where is that fire? The fury? Have you already forgotten your beloved Lunafreya?”

He hasn’t remembered Luna’s voice for centuries. The mention of her loss starts the ache in his heart anew, but still he does not hate Ardyn for it. 

“I know you,” he says instead. “I know you.”

“You know nothing,” Ardyn snarls, but his composure falters nonetheless. “You know nothing of how long I have awaited your coming. Of how much I have dreamed of this moment. Of your destruction. Of your pain.”

“I know about waiting,” Noctis tells him. “Two thousand years of darkness, you said.”

_ “Ages,”  _ Ardyn whispers.

“Ages,” Noctis repeats, and he nods. He knows what two thousand years mean when they are spent waiting in the light. He has given himself over and over to learn the truth of his calling. “Then it’s time we end it.”

He reaches his hand to the sky, letting the Ring glimmer on his finger. Holy magic drifts from it like mist, surrounding him and Ardyn in a tornado of swirling magic. Sound becomes muted around them, locking them together in a world between life and death and time.

The kings are all there, he knows. They wait for his call.

“Return as you were,” he says. “A kind and noble king.”

Ardyn flinches away, snarling. He staggers backwards, losing his hat in the process, and when he looks back up at Noctis, his eyes bleed black ichor. “I was never a king!” he hisses. “I was never your savior!”

“They wronged you,” Noct insists, walking towards the Immortal Accursed. “The gods. The Messengers. Your brother.”

“You claim to know me,” Ardyn sneers. “You dare-”

“You want what I want,” Noct says. “For this to end. To go home. Join your family.”

And he sees them far away down the long hallway of steel, running towards him.

Ignis. Gladio. Prompto.

His own family.

He smiles.

“Be at peace, Ardyn Lucis Caelum,” Noctis says quietly. He walks up to Ardyn, staring into his eyes.

Ardyn growls again, but this time it’s more like a sob. The black ichor on his cheeks is streaked with saltwater that traces fresh paths along his cheeks. “No,” he whispers, and he shudders.

“Don’t fear,” Noct assures him, and the Ring flares once more, chasing the deathly white pallor from Ardyn’s face. “Don’t fear.”

“Ardyn,” a voice calls from the formless void, and Noctis recognizes it with a shiver.

Ardyn’s golden eyes widen and turn glassy. “Somnus?” he asks breathlessly. And then he asks something else in the tongue of old Solheim, thousands of years more ancient than Noct’s oldest memories.

Somnus replies in the same melodious language that sounds almost divine. His voice comes from everywhere and nowhere at once. 

It’s time.

Noctis draws his engine blade, and it gleams with the holy fire of gods and kings. Two thousand years of light have forget it. He levels it at Ardyn, takes a breath, and slides it home into his heart.

It’s a merciful death, after all these years.

“Thank you,” Ardyn breathes, and he falls backward into starlight.

The light fades.

The howl of feral magic around him dulls to a mere memory. The phantom wind stops rustling his hair even as the Ring flares up in triumph and Noctis banishes the engine blade from his hands.

And then all is quiet.

From the Crystal, a voice emerges.

“The Chosen King has sacrificed himself for his people.”

_ Bahamut. _

Noctis did not hate Ardyn. 

He hates Bahamut.

“Your memories,” Bahamut rumbles, and he is inside Noct’s mind, returning everything he would have known if not for millennia spent reliving death and pain and darkness.

Noctis nearly falls to his knees with the force of it. He screws his eyes shut against the onslaught of everything he has ever known and learned and lost again, desperate for the familiarity he’s lost but not ready for the pain it brings. He shakes, gasping for air as if that’ll bring some relief. And then the memories slide into place in their old homes in his mind, finally recovered after millennia of decay.

Noctis remembers his rage.

“Such is our gift to the Chosen for his sacrifice.”

Noct glares.

He looks into the Crystal and reaches out his hand. The light rises to meet him, glimmering bright white and blue and dangerous, but-

It does not hold him.

It has nothing more to give him.

So it’s over.

Noctis conjures the engine blade once more, twirls it in his hand, and plunges it into the depths of the Crystal. 

The voice of Bahamut explodes in his ears with the full force of the astrals.

**_You dare-_ **

“Fuck you,” Noctis growls, and the Crystal shatters.

He’s more powerful than the gods, after all.

The voice in his head falls silent. Noct bares his teeth at the rubble of the relic of the Lucian kings, clenching his fists around the might that is his and his alone.

“Noct!”

_ Ignis. _

He looks down the corridor. Ignis rushes to him, heedless of perils with his cane nowhere in sight, running to Noctis out of sheer force of will and instinct. Noct meets him halfway, sweeping him up and kissing his neck, his cheeks, his eyes; his lips. 

“What’s all this for?” Ignis asks, laughing. Noct presses his face into Ignis’s chest, relishing the sound of the laughter he finds there. He hasn’t heard Ignis laugh for lifetimes now.

“It worked,” he breathes. “It worked. It  _ worked.”  _

“It worked,” Ignis agrees.

“Ignis-”

“There are things I saw, Noctis,” Ignis says breathlessly. “Things that I thought would come to pass. Horrible things. But you - you’ve changed it.” He sounds as if he might say something more, but tears hitch into dominance in his voice, and Ignis just pulls him even closer, holding him like the world might tear them apart if he lets go. 

And then the others are there, running towards them with smiles on their faces, and Noct welcomes them into the hug, because maybe this means that they can finally go home again.

So they celebrate.

They find a window and realize that they can see the stars.

“It’s finally over,” Noct whispers.

He falls asleep in Zegnautus Keep for the first time in two thousand years.

When he wakes the next day, Ignis smiles at him and whispers, “We won.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [triplehelix.](http://www.triplehelix.tumblr.com)


End file.
